Western Lit. 1-25: Aristotle: The Philosopher

    When we speak about philosophy, what is the first thing that comes to mind? For most people in the west, it is an image like that of Raphael's School of Athens, a picture of Greek architecture and Greek philosophers. Why does this image strike us so vividly? Perhaps it is because a large part of all human achievements happened in the backwater called Greece, especially in the small city of Athens, during a period of only 300 years. More importantly, the most prolific scholar of the greatest philosophical epoch in human history lived there, and his name was Aristotle. He is known as the father of modern science and the creator of the first empirical method and the logical method. His writing covered a vast array of subject matter including philosophy, science, and politics, in over 200 treatises. As a teacher, he influenced figures such as Alexander the Great and Theophrastus. After his death, his writings were preserved by his students and went on to dominate western and Islamic thought for the next 2,000 years. When we speak of philosophy we might think of the Greeks in general terms. But when we speak of philosophers themselves, we think of The Philosopher.

    Many scholars have a high output, Mises wrote at least 28 volumes, Gary North produced over 50 books, and Rothbard churned out at least a whopping 60 complete books. These are by no means small contributions, but Aristotle, over his lifetime, produced more than 200 works, of which only 31 lectures survive. these alone cover volumes in the fields of biology, botany, chemistry, ethics, history, logic, metaphysics, rhetoric, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, physics, poetics, political theory, psychology, and zoology. Out of all his work, which is almost beyond belief, his greatest contribution was to make the world curious about knowledge. For the first time in history humanity began to wonder about how things worked, and today we stand on his shoulders, able to see the world much clearer than ever before.

    It complements a man of great intellect to teach his wisdom, and by doing so his students inherit his methods. As a lifelong scholar and teacher, Aristotle laid the foundations of formal logic which were considered the standard for millennia. After leaving Macedon in his youth Aristotle studied at the academy for 20 years. During this time he was surrounded by the platonic tradition and managed to improve upon it with his own ideas. After some time his fame spread and he was summoned by the King of Macedon to tutor and influence the greatest warrior who would ever live, Alexander the great. This education would have a profound effect on both men as Alexander fell deeply in love with Hellenic culture. In return, Alexander received a gift equivalent to millions of dollars for the founding of The Lyceum in Athens. This would be a center of intellectual influence in Greece for hundreds of years. 

    The preserved writings of Aristotle only constitute about a fifth of his total output, and yet they encompass nearly a million words. These were partially preserved by later Roman philosophers such as Cicero and Seneca. After the fall of the roman empire, the works were lost to the Latin west but survived in the East. Here they were inherited by the Islamic caliphates and the Easter Empire. They were held as nearly sacred writing by many including Caliphs, Emperors, scholars, philosophers, and scientists. Here they aided even further developments in science and philosophy. After the fall of Constantinople, they were finally translated into Latin and had a profound effect on medieval Europe. Throughout the Renaissance and enlightenment, they played a central role in western thought. Great men such as Thomas Aquinas, William of Oakham, Francis Bacon, and Ludwig Von Mises all followed the Aristotelian tradition of science and empiricism. Over time all of the sciences he pioneered were refined and perfected by the west, but that would have been far less likely without him.

    The end of Aristotle's life came unexpectedly but in its own good time. After the death of Alexander, he fled from Athens and passed away from a bowel complaint. He was laid to rest next to his late wife but he did not die there. He pioneered many fields of study found in modern science. His work laid the foundations for logical studies and the scientific method. Throughout his life, he had tremendous influence from a long successful career and academic position in his lyceum. His preserved writings have influenced scholars from all over the west and Islamdom over millennia. For these reasons and many more, we remember Aristotle as the greatest philosopher of all time, THE Philosopher if you will.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aristotle#:~:text=He%20made%20pioneering%20contributions%20to,Athens%2C%20known%20as%20the%20Lyceum.

Gov. 1A-25: An Infantile Trust: Power and the state *

    In recent years there has been a lot of hubbub made about the definitions of words. Many people are unable to provide simple definitions of nouns, but something even more difficult is defining the proper role of the state. For their part statists seem unable to agree on what constitutes a legitimate government, or what its role might be, but most of all not a single one of them agrees on what the state ought to do with money. Everyone agrees they should be doing... something but how could they know? Should it dictate the use of language? Flatten the economy to an anthill? Win the war on drugs? Cover the country in solar panels? Provide insurance to pay big pharma? For any of these things, the state must have money. But the state is a monopoly of violence first and foremost, they are in the business of producing bads, not goods, and nobody will pay them for it willingly. For this reason, they level taxes on everything under the sun. A gas tax, liquor tax, sales tax, inflation tax, even bagels are taxed! This means that the benefits of any spending are a package deal with the tyranny of taxes.

    Any rational person has to reject this view of the state as a benevolent maternal goddess. Humanists disgrace the name of Christ and mock his children for believing in what they call an immoral fairy tale. At the same time, they also worship a god which has bread for all mouths, productive work for all hands, Capital for every venture, unending credit, and debt, and salve for every wound. Voting is their prayer, monuments are their temples, and politicians are their priests. What they refuse to admit is that their false god is supported by theft and violence alone. They are dupes of one of the strangest illusions that have ever taken hold of the human mind, even stranger than the communists pretend Christ to be. They mock the church saying it oppresses the poor, but the opposite is true. Our goal is to become one with the Logos so that we might glorify him, and that desire spawns a love for our fellow men who are also made in his image. Likewise, the goal of the statist religion is to live life at the expense of others. This sick desire is a source of war, plunder, slavery, and all manner of other atrocities.

    The deep desire for sin in man is grounded in the desire to gain satisfaction without regard to anything besides self-destructive gratification. In a statist society, the oppressor does not oppress his victim directly, he calls on the state to do it for him. But their god is imperfect, "it can never satisfy one party without adding to the labor of others." Truly, "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else" (Bastiat, Government, p.99). "But truly, the most astonishing aspect of this religion is the blindness of the people to the scandal of it all. They are utterly unable to apply their most fundamental morals consistently. If they did, they might begin to suspect that 

"reciprocal plunder is no less plunder because it is reciprocal" (Bastiat, Government, p.100). In the same way that we are told Christians do not question our beliefs, the statists make themselves hypocrites. 

    From wherever a people get their laws, there also will you discover their highest god. In the modern world, the state is the source of law, sanctions, succession, authority, and sovereignty. this fallacious representation of deity is a fertile source of calamities. The state creates millions of tiny 'unseen' problems with its corrupt doctrine, but statists ignore this and attribute the problems to externalities rather than the perverse covenant system. They don't think of it this way but the state is a creature with two hands. One is a large and rough hand for extorting large quantities of wealth. The other hand is small and soft, it is for giving back a little. On account of the second hand, they count the creature innocent, but the giving would be impossible without the taking, and the monster keeps far more than it gives back. The thing that is seen is the blessings of the giving, but the unseen cost is the hoard of wealth the dragon steals and then gambles away.

    There are other problems with giving trust to a state, they are extremely unstable. No organization can go on stealing and creating grievances without upsetting someone, but even if stats could exist peacefully nobody agrees on how they ought to be run. These conflicts are the source of civil war, insurgencies, and revolution. This might not seem like a big deal at the moment, but America perhaps has dealt with the most rebellions of any country in the world in recorded history. There were possibly hundreds of Indian Wars, over 250 slave rebellions, and hundreds of other political engagements from every corner of the political spectrum. Outside of America, many countries have coups every few years. South America, Africa, Southern Europe, and Asia, no matter where you look this is a serious problem. It starts when a new government comes to power, and inevitably begins to lavish promises which are impossible to perform, but even these promises differ from those of the public, which has hopes and dreams that can never be realized. Over time some states realize it is much easier to promise than to perform and to do it repeatedly, so once it is broken, and it is, everything stays broken.

    

    But how does the state keep up with any of its promises? It is impossible for a state to give more than it takes. It does not add any value to society. At best it can only add unwanted utilities, if the people wanted them they would pay for them voluntarily. All the state does is seize money and redistribute it without prices, which means it is always bashing its brains out on the socialist calculation problem. Even if they did have a way to tell if what they were doing is valuable, the state has no incentives to create value. Politicians are only incentivized to create a perception of value to citizens in order to be elected. While in office there are only weak personal and moral incentives to do good. But there is absolutely no real mechanism for regulating the way political action is pursued. The legislature can vote for any crime, any injustice, and any measure of spending

    So how does the state reconcile this irreconcilable conflict? Well, much like its lower-class citizens, it lives on credit. It does this by requesting Moral, Social, and Economic loans which it quickly spends and never intends to repay. It is far easier to swap out the talking heads and point the finger than it is to solve problems because solving those problems would literally cost them everything. The result of this unsustainable cycle of spending and borrowing is crippling bankruptcy. This bankruptcy extends to all areas of society including the moral, social, and economic realms. The very idea of a state is that it should give more than it takes. But this is both impossible and harmful to everyone involved, I suppose it just "comes with the territory".

    Friedreich Bastiat put it about as well as anyone could. "Government is and ought to be [seen as] nothing whatever but common force organized, not to be an instrument of oppression and mutual plunder among citizens; but, on the contrary, to secure everyone his own, and to cause justice and security to reign." (p. 107) But the state does the opposite. As a monopoly of violence, it perverts the purpose of the government to produce only evil. We must abandon mutual plunder and the imbalance of promises between what can be done and what we want to be done. That kind of thinking leads to War, Plunder, and Slavery. The deification of the state is an illusion that feeds on its own love of sin. To end this cycle we must have a way to restrict governments to securing rights. The way to do that is to ensure they check each other's power in the marketplace of ideas. They have to follow the path of objective morality and for that to happen God must be the highest sovereign. We cannot trust the state, therefore our goal is a voluntary society based on the law of God, not the politics of plunder. 

Gov 1A-20: The Politics of Plunder

    In the course of human affairs, it is eminent how utterly suicidal the structure of the state can truly be. However, if there was a single fatal disposition of the state it would be the proclivity to live at the expense of others. In its every action, the state is used by those who control it to extract wealth from others for their own benefit, especially from weaker rival groups. In this way, the modern state, with all of its constitutions, representation, and bureaucracy, has not evolved beyond the primitive states of rival villages in the upper paleolithic. A continent-spanning war between the mightiest nations is little more complex than two dozen cavemen bashing each other's heads in over a bad harvest. All political conflict comes down to groups of primates going ape-shit on one another, only on a far grander, and more terrifying scale. Thus the way polity conducts itself, politics, ought not to be distinguished by grandiose visions of world peace and fraternity, rather we ought to view it as it is, a struggle over the 'right' to live off the labor of others. This is what Bastiat called The Politics of Plunder. wherever plunder is less burdensome than labor, it prevails

    If the Lord our God, Christ, the spirit we must emulate in order to thrive has commanded us "Thou shalt not steal" the Lord of the flies, the serpent, and the deceiver have commanded mankind "Thou shall not steal, except by majority vote". Yet we eat of the tree we fancy best, the fruit of our own choosing. A part of that fruit is the state, which serves only to preserve rights from its own tree, and fatally, the ability to live at the expense of others. It does this by waging wars, oppressing the people for the extraction of God's property, enslavement, and the protection of coercive monopolies, itself included. If the origin of sin is to make our own right, then The sin of plunder comes from our desire to live at the expense of others. In the realm of rightful law, we call theft criminal, no matter how uncomfortable it is for us personally, but things change once we enter into the realm of politics.

    In the west, we hold our own property, and the property of others as so sacred few of us ever think to violate it. But when the tribe, the protecting agent of the law, the state, intervenes as a middleman we make ourselves foolish like apes. Everyone does a whoop and a holler for plunder and thievery, everyone wants their bread and circuses, and they all dance and shout and cry in support of the man who promises the most and best. Nobody realizes that the state is that great fiction by which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. Nobody asks how this kind of behavior can stand, much less how we as human beings can stand it! On what foundation does this great monument to fantasy stand? At those words, the great orgy of statism degenerates into mortal combat. The only things everyone can agree upon are war, exploitation, coercion, and slavery. The political nature of the west grows like a tumor in her bosom until it kills her, but she refuses to remove it because it is the dearest object of comfort to her children. Milk obtained by lying is sweet to a man, But afterward, his mouth will be filled with dust. 

    For all time, the Law has been our tutor to the image of God, so that we may be justified by our faith in him. The purpose of the law is to make us more like Christ so that we will suffer less for all manner of tragedy, including plunder. But the law is ignored, And justice never comes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; Therefore justice comes forth perverted. The law has become an instrument of plunder, numb to its true purpose. This perversion is because of the corrupting influences of violence and power over men, which come from the desire to live by a right not afforded to you. The results of state plunder stem from a broken law, but the effects reach far beyond individuals. The conflict between True morality and the perversion of law leads to a loss of moral sense in society and a lack of respect for the law. The Destabilizing forces of this conflict may end in people legitimizing slavery to their government, depending on protection rackets, and sustaining monopolies of force. 

    Most political action today stems from the desire to get the vote in order to plunder. The means of plunder is taxation, a source of wealth for whoever happens to slip their hand into the voluptuous pockets of the state. However, the state keeps most of the wealth for its own ideas, whether these are wars, monuments, or other megalomania. These ideas do not create wealth, and at best only provide an unwanted utility. The fundamental axiom of political life is the right to assistance. That is, any group has a right to any amount of 'assistance' as long as their voting base is influential enough. This could take the form of forever increasing bribes to the masses or even corporate welfare. It matters little in the long run. both are imposed through democracy as the war for political victory spreads. Thus go the ceremonies of plunder.

    In the past few decades, there has been a lot of talk about defeating this or that disease. But there is really only one disease that disgusts me, and that is the terminal condition of sin. We can't quite cure it if only absolve ourselves of its guilt. However, we can treat the symptoms, one of which is the great fiction. If we want to fight plunder we have to know how to test for it and how to deal with it. The best indicator for plunder is whether or not a law redistributes wealth. If it does, then the law is legalized plunder. For example, protectionism favors domestic producers over foreign ones, a form of gross discrimination. This policy may grow local industry, or it might ruin it. Either way, it certainly works to funnel cash away from consumers, and competition into the hands of the rich.

    In the past, plunder has been a right held only by the elite. For a time this preserved a sense of order and general respect for the private property ethic. As C.S. Lewis put it "It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies" In recent times the pendulum has swung towards a more egalitarian sentiment. The string of thought is that theft is not theft if it is done in the service of the common good, people owe it to themselves. This, unfortunately, has led to a state of extremely high time preference, all things are held in common except those objects within personal use. Because of this unfortunate circumstance, better known as The Tragedy of the Commons, everyone is incentivized to compete for the existing resources rather than preserve them for later use. To illustrate this imagine a wrecking ball chained to a crane inside a building owned by society incorporated. Every time the ball swings too far it caves in a wall and destroys the building. After a disaster such as this, many people are killed, and the whole thing has to be rebuilt. But there is a better solution, we could choose not to destroy our society, from the inside with lies and plunder. Let it be that nobody should plunder anyone.

    This approach, the abolition of plunder in society, describes a meritocracy. Nothing is more meritocratic than the absence of the undeserved privilege to plunder. Sadly, meritocracy is not accepted by those without merits. In the modern era, the state is only a franchise to the competition for the privilege. This has always been the source of revolutions, civil war, and the looming collapse of civilization. Plunder is more than something wrong, plunder is the opposite of the idea of human rights. Property rights are human rights, and plunder is the abolition of those rights. The basis for any involuntary transfer of property is the idea that the original owner had no property rights, of which all his rights consist. In the same sense, reciprocal plunder is no less plunder because it is reciprocal, such a nullifying action is no less dehumanizing than the first. A violation of human rights is a violation of God's sacred temple, thus theft and retribution are wholly sinful and destructive. 

    Perversity among perversities, The law has become the instrument of the same evil it was sworn to prevent. The walking contradictions, the Platonic sophists of the enlightenment have reached down from heaven to touch our finger and to shine light into the cave of our primitive understanding. They enlighten us about the tender mercies of the state, and its honest desire to protect life, liberty, and property, and for that reason, we must preserve it. But our antithesis is the antitheism to their state worship. We oppose them, daring to suggest as primitive fools that the primitive origin of the state lies with primitive bullying and the struggle for power. To us the bully is the most primitive form of the state, it has always been a violent and plundering organization. When an ape brutalizes his fellows he dominates the group. Over time the bully ape became a tribal warlord, these warlords became kings, and so on. Historically, the state has always been restrained by other governments, those blessed with self-government, religious groups, and tribal identities have checked the expansion of the state into their own sovereign spheres. Without these restraints, the state is only an agency of unrestrained plunder, a monopoly on violence with no competition. 

    The fact that sovereign governments have always hindered the state raises the question of which restrictions can justly be placed on the state. The answer has to do with the nature of reward and punishment. Plunder is fundamentally immoral in the eyes of God, and, in a society without plunder, just laws are the mere negation of evil. In other words, negative sanctions are the proper response against plunder. The need to reduce harm and provide justice gives birth to the law and the legal system. The goal of this system is to protect the triad of rights: Personality, Liberty, and Property. The statist system is the cruel perversion of this ideal in the service of plunder. Remember, an unjust law is active, It forces people to act and plunders them of their rights, but a just law punishes evil to preserve those rights. 

    In the eyes of God harm is injustice, and plunder is a grievous sin against the image of God. Therefore plunder is unjust and illegal in the courts of heaven and earth. Justice is the form of the good, and law is the enshrined code of justice legitimized by the sanctions of government. With this ethic in mind, we can see that law is an organized form of justice and that justice is the truth about man as described by God. The purpose of the law is to protect personality, liberty, and property. For the protection of these rights, the government is organized as collective action. With the right of the sovereign to exclude other governments it becomes an extended network for the defense of personality. Philosophically there is no difference between a group of individual men and an equal group of men who happen to share a creed, therefore government is best understood as a collective of individuals. One man does not have the right to murder, neither do ten or ten thousand or millions of them altogether. No government as a whole has any more rights than an individual does on his own. the command of Christ is to resist not evil, to turn the other cheek, and to love our enemies. Many will dispute this, but our command from heaven is to refuse to meet violence with violence, collective force, a form of tribal violence, is out of the question, only action which is glorifying to God is permissible. 

    No human government is truly sovereign, all are beholden to the one true king for the service of his glory. In the present, all things work in the service of the king, and all forms of government are no different.  All earthly kingdoms rebel against their king and for this reason they are passing away to be replaced by the kingdom of God. While they are here they exist to defend that which glorifies God, in particular three things. The first of these is Personality, or the right to safely keep a personal identity, it is the individual which glorifies God so it must be protected. The second is the liberty to perform actions, which is necessary because one cannot act to glorify God without the freedom to act. Finally, property must be protected. If individuals have control over their personality, that is personal properties, and they have the freedom to act,, then by extension, they own the fruits of those freedoms. But what does the government, and particularly civil government do in its rebellious state? It moves from justice to injustice by perverting the law and deceiving the masses. We are told the Government ought to rebel against the individual justice of God in favor of the collectivized justice of a false king. This is done for three main reasons. 1. Naked greed, 2. Misconceived Philanthropy, and 3. Laziness mixed with unregulated power. All three of these excuses lie in sin, their purpose to facilitate plunder for the goal of living at the expense of others in which there is no good. 

    I have written a great deal, but much of it is difficult to understand and all of which will seem strange at first. But now that it has been read it is important to come to a set of conclusions about it. To begin with, Justice is grounded in the image of our fellow man who we love as ourselves and second only to the good itself. Because of this image of mankind, we have the desire to protect our brothers, and for this reason, we organize governments of many kinds. These governments, which are passing away as the kingdom approaches, are designed to protect from assaults on personality, liberty, and property. Because of man's collective and individual rebellion against God, the law now assaults all three. Plunder originates in this sinful rebellion out of a desire to thrive ignorant of the true image of man. Law would contradict itself to plunder from some and give to others, therefore law should be a party to these ideas. But the laws are made to contradict their purpose in spite of it. Men compete for the power to plunder other men, we call this war and politics. But earthly rulers are no different from other men, all are greedy, misguided, and lazy, and for this reason, they are being replaced for the glory of God. The law and the collective organization which authorize it exist for the mutual protection of property rights. Just laws only protect, they do not through plunder and redistribution which are contradictions of purpose. The only way for us to achieve this great goal is by the establishment of a voluntary society. Nothing can be done to shield against violence, sin, or plunder if it is not done voluntarily, to force these things on anyone is to fight evil with evil.  

    Statism is a contradiction and blasphemy against the sovereignty of God, laws are meant to serve him by showing us how to love our neighbor. Plunder is a sin that originates from the desire to conduct life at the cost of other men, to do so is a curse against your neighbor and a rebellion against God's law. Yet men compete for the position of a ruler so that they may maximize their plunder and redistribution. The solution is to voluntarily accept the kingdom of God on earth as our government, not the kingdoms of dirt. This cannot be forced, and it cannot be avoided in history.

Western Lit. 1-25: Spartan Polity

    When most westerners envision the warrior archetype, they see a young spartan man clad in bronze with a corinthian style helmet. To most, this is what a noble warrior looks like, but what they do not know is that the reality of Sparta is less honorable. Far from Zach Snider's 300 Sparta was not a state of freedom-loving warrior-nobles. In reality, Sparta was a small agricultural community in the south of the Greek Pelloponisia. It was a backwater in the largest backwater in the Mediterranean. Beyond this, the inhabitants weren't as noble as you might think. The social structure of Sparta was highly classist and depended on an authoritarian police state. The picture that history paints is very different indeed from our romanticized view of Thermopylae. 

    The city which came to be known as Sparta emerged from a series of agricultural communities at the south end of pelloponisia. This began when a tribe of Dorians migrated into the area between 800-1000 BC and began rapidly subjugating the local Ionians. The area was fertile for crops but lacked natural harbors. In order to control the larger population of Ionian serfs the Dorian nobility conceived of an authoritarian police state supported by slave labor. This policy can hardly be criticized by a modern audience considering the hypocrisy of such an accusation. In any case, only a tenth of the population were Spartiares and thus citizens. this led to a social structure which may seem strange to us at face value, but less so when examined historically. 

    Spartiari men became recruits at seven, soldiers at 20, married citizens at 30, and returned at 60 to be attended by a personal slave on a plot of land allotted by the state. They would have been at the top of their social hierarchy, with political divisions among them determined by wealth and age. Spartan men lived to serve the state as the arm of the military, but women were considered no less important, albeit inferiors. They also underwent physical training to become physically fit and to bear strong sons, but their value also lay in overseeing affairs of estate. With men always gone at war or policing the slaves it was important for the outnumbered Spartiares to leverage every advantage possible, thus, women commanded a great deal more respect than they did elsewhere In Greece. 

    

    Below the citizen Spartiares, there were two major social classes. The higher of the two was Perioeci or middle class. They conducted all trade and industry, for a time it was illegal for Spartans to participate in the trades so the economy was entirely dependent on them. They were free to travel, trade own land, marry, serve in the military, and more importantly, pay taxes. They did not have the full rights of citizens but could become one by serving well in battle. They lived in their own cities and were self-governing, as long as they remained part of Sparta. Like in most of the ancient world only a small number of people belonged to this class, another group altogether had the privilege of actually populating Sparta

    When the Dorian invaders subjugated the local Ionians they almost bit off more than they could chew. This subject class, which would come to be known as Helots outnumbered their rulers eight to one. The honor of performing all the less... desirable work fell on them, this included farming, cleaning, construction, and housework. Nearly every Spartan family had at least one slave, and many wealthy families had entire bloodlines under their thumbs. The unfortunate masses were subjugated to exactly the treatment you might expect from a bad movie trope. Slaves endured all kinds of cruelty and frequent massacres designed to keep them in check. the most prominent of these was the annual Crypteia.  During this period every new soldier would be encouraged to murder as many slaves as possible, especially the fit young men. Despite these realities, according to Myron of Priene, emancipation was 'common. The most typical reason was for dutifully completing a tour of service as a hoplite in the military. Slaves also bought their freedom at prices which were, even for the upper classes, considered exorbitant. Yes, despite forming the backbone, arms, legs, and skeleton of Sparta, the Helots were not appreciated as anything but property. The upside to all of this was that the spartan elite did not have to work and could focus on their main pursuit, training to subjugate their slaves, How counter-intuitive of them.

    

    Even Barbaric civilizations make their best efforts to raise strong children, and the Spartans were no different. Of course, citizens were just a fraction of the population, and only the upper class could be educated if they expected to maintain their system of domination. Spartan education is better described as a system of refinement, and despite the common belief, it is unlikely this 'refinement' began at birth. Unwanted children would have been left in a public area to be adopted, or not, by couples who could not bear children. Then, starting at seven, young boys were taken away to live in communal barracks. for the next 13 years, they would train to be servants of the state as soldiers and citizens. This training was absolutely brutal and consisted of intense exercise and hardship including starvation and freezing cold. meanwhile, their sisters remained at home to be educated by their mothers. Girls were also expected to exercise for similar reasons. It was believed that a strong woman would bear strong sons for the state. When their training was complete Spartans were ready to live a life dedicated to preserving their slave state. It was not quite America but no soviet union either. Sparta was a strange country.

    The coming of age is something of a human universal. Nothing is more exciting than the manifest flourishing of your offspring who carry your genetic material out into the world. Jews have their Bar Mitzvahs, The Tutsi had tribal sports, Americans have the 'sweet 16' and the Spartans have the Crypteia, a somewhat... unique ritual. Of course, a man who was old enough to slaughter innocents wasn't quite a real man yet, no spartan was permitted to visit his wife, except by seeking out of the barracks, until he was thirty. At that time men were free to live on their own land, participate in the assembly, and inherit the full rights of Spartan citizenship. Of course, he was still a tool to the state, a tool to be exploited until it was useless. Spartan retirement was almost rewarding considering the lives they led. besides the aforementioned benefits, a man in his 60s was ellaegeble to fill one of 28 not-so-lifelong positions on the council of the old, the Chief Judicial, legislative and Administrative branches. Of course, a popular assembly of men over 30 was able to approve the legislation. Presiding over these bodies were the two kings, who acted as the arms, or more aptly, fists, of the state. Over time an elected body of five Euphors became the most prominent body, probably because election permits demagoguery. this proved to be one downfall of Sparta, as in later years the Euphors became extremely corrupt. Of course, the entire state, like any criminal organization, was really supported by the soldiers of the military. 

       You wouldn't know it from the myths of its former inhabitants, but the land in the south of the Peloponnese is surprisingly fruitful. Despite its jagged cliffs and high mountains, the rolling hills and valleys of the coastal landscape provide fertile land for agriculture and timbering. Even the harsher features are somewhat of a blessing in disguise. The mountains are rich in iron and yield good terracotta for pottery. These were, of course, natural exports from Sparta, even though their trade was limited by a lack of natural harbors. But the tiny city-state shared more with its neighbors than natural resources.  Like all Greeks, they had their fair share of fairs, festivals, dancing, and music. Of course, you could hardly consider them greek if they didn't share a love of Homer, and of course, they did. despite all their differences, the Spartans were quite similar to other greeks in terms of economics. They exported their natural resources, had a small and skilled artisan class, and shared a common cultural tradition. 

    This flourishing culture wouldn't last long though. In fact, by the 6th-century cultural life ceased to innovate and began to atrophy, something had changed. To understand this phenomenon it is important to look back to the founding of the budding state. With the conquest of neighboring Messenia in the 8th century, BC Sparta was faced with the decision to integrate or rule the inhabitants, they chose the latter. Little did they know this would be their downfall. Faced with the prospect of ruling as a minority, the Spartans decided to make a few lifestyle changes. Beginning before the 6th century cultural activities were restricted by the state, this ensured tough citizens who were not occupied with frivolous things like singing or acting. But following Lycurgus, this trend reached a whole new level. Following a sweeping set of cultural and political forms, spartan society would never be the same. The goal of these reforms was to enforce equality among citizens, military fitness, and austerity. These virtues ensured the survival of the spartan way of life against the constant threat of revolts or usurpations by rival powers. 

    The history of Sparta was as interesting as it was cruel and bloody, perhaps because of it. Despite all of their military prowess the small empire never performed as well as you might guess. The slave state only began to rise as a dominant power in the 5th century, peaking in the 4th century after the Peloponnesian war. Unfortunately, the glorious victory of that war was not enough to stop its decline. Whether you chalk it up to geography or politics or something else altogether Sparta never developed a navy large enough to expand off their tiny peninsula. Further, all their military campaigns were limited by the constant threat of Helot revolts and other forms of social unrest. Today many greeks look back on the Peloponnesian war with righteous disdain, and perhaps spartan citizens did as well. It was the peak of their power, their triumph over all of Greece but at the same time, it marked the height of their corruption and the death of their imperial lifestyle

    So what do we make of Sparta? Certainly, we can never view them as heroes, or even as noble warriors again. To us, their morality is beyond redemption. Their Government did not exist to support individual rights, it existed to preserve the rights of the mighty, even if it meant reducing themselves to cogs in a machine. That idea would be bad enough, even if most Americans didn't believe in the same things themselves. No, far worse, they perpetuated a system of tyrannical slavery and genocide. They didn't even build cool monuments like obelisks or collimated temples such as the Washington monument and white house. If you are going to enslave entire races you have to at least leave one cool monument, geez. I Cannot think of a more perfect way to summarize Spartan society than with their greatest achievement in winning the Peloponnesian war. Despite previous vetoes from their allies, Sparta did go to war with Athens in 311 BC. Sparta does what it wants. During the war, Spata portrayed itself as the liberator of the greeks from tyranny, spartan men were treated as little more than tools for war such as spears and swords. Finally, Sparta ended the war by capturing hundreds of people in slave raids and seizing Athens into a backwater, to bring civilization of course. This overview of their society gives us a better idea of what they stood for and will give us a clearer picture of what distinguished Athens in the ancient world. With that Adieu. 

Our Duty

This speech was prepared to be delivered at an indeterminate time to my troop on the subject of our duty to the patrol method. Much of it is plagiarized from Lord Baden Powell but a good deal is written on my own. In any case, the goal is to effectively persuade the troop to adopt the patrol method. Our troop has not had patrols since before I joined and I intend to implement them before I leave. the oratory style is the reason for the strange punctuation.

My kinsfolk, I want to remind you, in a very few words, of what your duty is.

Of what a scout does apart from merely living in camps, cooking on your own, and playing scout games.

First of all, of course, you are trusted, on your honor, to do your best to live out the scout law, which is first to work for God and his country, and secondly to help other people at all times. And thirdly, to keep yourself fit, with respect to both body and mind.

In addition to this, each one of us is called to help the great help movement by

making ourselves so good of scouts that we will, later on, make great scoutmasters ourselves.

A beloved leader once said of scouts “once scout, always a scout”. Don't forget a very important part of your duty is quite a small thing and that is to do a good turn to somebody every day. Now to you scout masters, you are doing a good turn for the boys in training them to have good character. You are doing a good turn for the country since you are making good citizens

for the future, and you are doing much to empower the youth in their struggles.

To you, the youth, it is important to show your younger siblings how to be good successful men. In doing so, you are also doing good for yourself, since you are learning to become a better citizen, and to train better citizens in your own image. In this way, you'll develop in yourself, patience and creativity, in the face of difficulty and discouragement. you'll practice servant leadership, exercise loyalty, and instill the virtue of sacrifice, which cannot fail to make you a better man and a better citizen.

And now I wish to speak upon the method, which enables us to go forth in this manner. Everybody admires the virtue of great leaders and citizens, but do not be content to look on at others playing their part, play the game yourself. You have your chance, it is quite open to every one of you, through a unique institution, found only in scouting. This is the patrol method, the main object of which, is to give real responsibility to as many youths as possible. Through it, every youth has his chance, to be a leader in his own right, to be responsible for his own growth, and the wellbeing of all his fellows. 

In the setting of scouting, this growth takes the form of learning skills and hobbies, which otherwise would not have been available to him. The outdoor adventure of scouting, with its sharp equipment, and smart dress, appeals to his sense of romance and imagination. Many of you have only a vague idea of the patrol method, but in the words of scoutings founder, “The patrol method is not one method in which Scouting for boys can be carried on, It is the only method.” The key to the entire organization lies, with the close-knit fraternity, of the patrols. A House built on sand cannot stand, and neither can a troop. The hardships, the difficulties, and the closeness of a patrol, forge bonds which cannot be severed. Being formed into patrols does not divide the youth, it gives them a sense of identity which shall remain with them, for the rest of their lives. It gives each group, a unique opportunity to pursue scouting adventures, in their own right, and fosters a sense of kinship and competition, within the entire troop. A House Built on a foundation of bricks will stand strong in any storm. 

The call of scouting, is really, the call to adventure. It appeals to us because of the smart uniforms, and the sharp equipment, and because it engages us in unique open-air activities. But do not confuse the call to adventure with the real mission of scouting, our duty. To Keep our oath, and to embody the law. The patrol method is really the best way to do this since it engages us all in active servant leadership, and best fosters the spirit of playful kinship in the troop, by allowing the youth to take charge of their own activities, and development as a whole as leaders. The Patrol System, is the one essential feature, in which Scout training differs from that of all other organizations, and where the system is properly applied, it is absolutely bound to bring success. It cannot help itself! With that, I encourage you all to work hard for yourselves and others and to do your duty to God and for your country.

I bid you a good day - Hayden Carlson

Western Lit. 1-20: Optimism in the Psalms

    Praise Yahweh! The Book of Psalms is a book of songs, they were meant to be sung with a harp but were more than a hymnbook. The book of psalms begins by depicting a lawful man like a tree in the new Eden, eternally prosperous and fruitful. But the wicked dry up in a desert without the water of life which is found in God. The second Psalm depicts the image of God's kingdom on earth. The evil ones are restrained as God's king rules from on high. This King Gives praise to God and blessings to his people; He restrains evil and loves good. These first two chapters of the psalms act as the prayerbook of God's people as they strive to be faithful to the law and bring about God's kingdom. They also show us the two ideas upon which the rest of the book is constructed, Sanctions and sovereignty. When we have these two ideas in mind we can begin to understand the rest of the book and the Optimistic narrative it presents.

    The Main body of the book is divided into five smaller 'books' which each end with praise to Yahweh. The first of these books focus on the call to covenant faithfulness in Israel and the blessing this will bring God's people. It praises the Law as upright and perfect for everyone who follows it. The book shifts to recall David's past deliverance and elevation as a king. David's ascension is paralleled by the deliverance of a new king from death to a universal lordship. Book one concludes by optimistically predicting this new king will bring the blessings of covenant faithfulness to all of the nations. 

    The second book opens with two poems that speak of the hope for a future temple in zion. It closes with the image of a messianic king ruling Israel by echoing the words of the prophets. Its conclusion is that the reign of this king will fulfill God's promises to Abraham in Genesis 13 and 22. The third book also concludes with a promise of a future messiah to rule Israel but contrasts it with the downfall and destruction of David's earthly kingdom, asking this time for a perfect ethical future. These two poems teach us about the future of God's kingdom. They prophesy that the future will be perfectly ruled by a messiah and that God will fulfill all of his promises to his people eternally. However, it does keep in mind the grim situation of Israel at the time of the exile.

        The fourth book responds to this crisis by calling back to the time of Moses. In the introduction, Moses calls for mercy on Israel for their sins as he did when they worshipped the golden calf. The middle of this book announces that God rules over all of creation and that creation is called to celebrate this rule of wisdom and justice. The fifth book again affirms that God hears the call of his people and that A messianic king will come to rule and destroy evil. Following this two parallel narratives are found called the Hallel and the Songs of Ascents. These two songs speak of a messianic kingdom and affirm hope for a future exile from evil into that kingdom. They are divided by Psalm 119 which explores the Splendor and goodness of God in the Torah.

    The conclusion to the psalms consists of five books, 145-150. Each begins and ends with Hallelu-Ya, A praise to God for his majesty. The middle Psalm, 148, declares that God has raised up a horn for his people like one raised in battle, this represents our spiritual victory over evil. This plays into the overall narrative of the Psalms which is told by the Psalms of lament and Psalms of praise. At the beginning of the book, Lamentations far outnumber Praises, and God's people are in despair, but at the end of the book, we are left with a picture of a saving messiah and a restored kingdom. The book does not end in despair, but in victorious praise to God. The Psalms do not ignore the pain of this world, but they look to the future for victory. This Story of Lament and Praise, Faith and Hope, Historic law and future Messiah, that is what the Psalms are all about. Praise Yahweh!

Outline thanks to BibleProject for the discernment of scripture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9phNEaPrv8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOvRQKqjBb8

Western Civ. 1-20: The Philosopher King, an Allegory for Christ

 3. What qualities does Plato's ideal monarch -- the "philosopher-king" -- possess?

    The Republic, Plato's great monument to authoritarianism, has been a curse to western civilization for the past few thousand years. In it, Plato expounds on a society governed by morally perfect philosophers, a mirror of vanity for Plato. This class of philosopher-kings was supposed to rule over a kingdom structured like Plato's model of the soul. These kings were envisioned as men of perfect constitution and virtue, selected from the ranks of the whole city. The idea was held in regard by some greeks, and certainly by some of the Roman emperors and European Monarchs of the late middle ages. Over the course of history, many prominent men have been influenced by The Republic and fallen prey to its devices. Even knowing this, is the concept of enlightened kingship as shallow as it seems, or is there more to the Platonic ideal than meets the eye? Let us find out. 

    To understand the king we must first know his kingdom, what follows is the structure of the republic. Plato saw the ideal form of government as being the same in the soul and in the polis. It was made of three parts, the appetitive, the spirited, and the rational. To him, the lower classes represented the unseeing appetite of man, those who were only concerned with their own well-being. They would be the producers and citizens of the city. Of course, every state needs a military and Plato assures us his will be incorruptible and virtuous. The City was to be policed and protected by a class of communistic auxiliaries. These would be men raised in spartan barracks without property or family, compelled to breed and fight for the service of the state. These strange warriors were to constitute the spirited aspect of the state. But the strangest class of all was the Guardians, an entire group of philosopher-beurocrats. I suppose that is how beurocrats see themselves but nevertheless, the idea is strange. These guardians would be perpetually subsidized to live without property or families. They would be responsible for running the state, freeing them to impose their philosophies on the public. 

    This strange kingdom is in fact governed by a strange king. A philosopher king after Plato's own image. Such a king was an image of vanity to Plato himself, who, declaredly best fit the description of one. . Such kings could be selected from any class for their virtues, but guardians would be most common. A King chosen from the logical class would be raised from birth in a commune without property or family. This was alleged to make them immune to corruption and nepotism. Later a guardian would receive a great education and serve in the bureaucracy. By the time a citizen of that class was fifty, he would be fit to rule according to the justice his philosophy had inclined him. Oddly enough a philosopher is the last person anyone would expect to become a king, to most they were useless academics. but strange still was the idea that qualified women should also rule and become philosopher queens, a radical idea for the time. 

    The Concept of a philosopher king has been popular in the west for thousands of years, Alexander, Marcus Aurelius, various Caliphs, and even Europeans like Friedreich the Great have been described this way. The key differences lie in the realities of their kingdoms. No state has ever achieved 'true platonism', and Plato seemed to not believe anyone could. Plato's political ideas differ from reality, probably more than he ever realized. Great leaders and Great philosophers are rare, their combination is like a unicorn, but to have someone who is totally selfless and incorruptible with those traits defies human nature. If such a man ever existed he would be God, and he did exist, his name is Jesus and his kingdom is here with us today. We can live in it, but only if we each endeavor to become like him. A true philosopher king cannot be appetitive or rash, and neither can we be in the kingdom of God. If we expect to rule earth like the form of God in heaven we have to embody the fullness of him. The image of Christ as ruler, and us as rulers in the image of Christ, this is the true nature of the philosopher king.

Western Civ. 1-20: The cave and God's light

 2. What was Plato's point in his allegory of the cave?

    How differently would we see our lives if we realized everything we knew about the world was only a shadow of the truth? This is precisely the question posed by Plato in his allegory of the cave. The cave is one of the most well-known allegories in all of philosophy. Its purpose is to describe the state of our enlightenment with respect to the true state of nature. The Cave teaches about what it truly means to love knowledge and to seek enlightenment. 

    The allegory goes something like this. A group of people is living in a cave, and the cave has an opening to the light but it cannot be seen from their position. The humans are chained against a wall unable to move, they can only see straight ahead against a wall. Above and behind them a fire is burning, and between the fire and the prisoners, there is a stage for puppeteers who visit and put on shows with all manner of things in the whole world. These people think they know about the real world, after all, the shadows are everything they know, how could they see anything else? they are not told of anything except the noises of the puppeteers and their fellows. But from our perspective, they must seem supremely ignorant of the truth. 

    The allegory does not leave us in this grim place, however. One day, one of the prisoners breaks out of his chains and walks out of the cave. At first, he will be blinded by even the glare of the opening, but as he steps into the light things will gradually become clearer to him. Suppose he should meet other people and speak with them. They would tell him about the world and he would be amazed to learn everything he had previously seen was merely the absence of substance contrasted with light. One day he will find water and see his reflection. Upon this, he will realize his true identity and place in the world. And all at once, seeing the sun in the sky, the source of truth, the world as it really is, and his place in it he would be overturned with the novelty and splendor of it all. 

With this revelation, he would feel an enormous desire to return to his fellows and set them free to wander the earth, stooping over to their level to free them and tell them about the true world. He may try to tell them the true form of the world, but they will think he is lying or insane. He might attempt to loosen their chains, but they will beat him from fear of it. There is little he can do to free them, it would come only as a chance that one or two might follow him up to the light and towards the truth. The horror of the situation is that most of the prisoners will refuse to leave the cave of their ignorance behind. they have become complacent and fear knowledge. 

But what did he mean by all of this? Plato was not like a blind man stumbling into a cave, rather he was a man freed of the limited perceptions of this world. The cave is the dark place from whence we emerge upon escaping the bonds of our limited perceptions. All men are chained like prisoners in a dark and material world forced to know only the shadow of the truth. When we begin to philosophize we escape chains and move into the light of the sun. We will see the world as it really is in the light of knowledge, as we look around we will come to recognize all things as they really are and to name our place in the world. We will uncover the mysteries of unknown heavens and finally gaze into the source of all knowledge, what is truly good. It is then the mission of philosophers to return to the unenlightened and lead them out of bondage into the real world and the truth. 

    The true implications of the Cave stretch far deeper than even this. Plato means to say that the things we perceive in life are not as real as the immaterial and conceptual things we service through philosophy. This concept also applies to morality. When we begin to conceive of true justice and the nature of God the concept of justice is more real than the shadow of it we see around us. For Plato, The forms exist in an immaterial and spiritual realm and these forms are more important than the material. According to him each object partakes of the essence of the transcendent forms but is surpassed by it, but the forms are unchanging and eternal. And the form which allows us to see anything in the world at all is good, shining like a conceptual sun we all need its light to survive and know our place in the world, or anything else. That is the meaning of the cave according to Plato.

Western Lit. 1-15: Sanctions and Songs

The breath of western poets is a book of songs. Their language is rooted in the Davidic tradition, With God as their muse, they write verses and sing praises to the great almighty God. Every civilization is established by its literature, and the psalms are the most foundational of all western poetry. Milton, Dante, and Shakespeare all drew inspiration from the Hebrew poets. The themes of the psalms penetrate every corner of western literature. Therefore to better understand contemporary western authors, and literature in general, we must understand the themes of the psalms

    The book of Psalms is usually divided into five books. Each book explores many themes, but each has a key idea. The following is a division proposed by theologian Ray R. Sutton. 

Book I (1-41) focuses on the idea of true transcendence and asserts the supreme sovereignty of God. 

Book II (42-72) implies an ethical hierarchy, through the idea that God's people can safely trust him, and that good men stand above evil ones in the ethical hierarchy. 

Book III (73-89) is about ethics, it proclaims God's law is perfect as a standard for truth and orientation in the world. (psalm 1:9)

Book IV (90-106) is perhaps the most important. It describes God's system of historical Sanctions and fleshes out the idea that God brings perfect judgment in history 

Book V (107-150) concludes by asserting Continuity. It states the righteous will inherit the earth and that God will reign supreme for all of time. 

    All of these themes are deeply significant for our understanding of the literature and the psalms in particular. However, not all themes are created equal. In psalms, all themes flow from the idea of historical sanctions. Throughout the book, sanctions are applied through the system of ethics in time. They must exist because of the law imposed by God through his sovereignty and affected by a hierarchy. an example follows, Psalm   37:21-23 "The wicked borrows and does not pay back, But the righteous is gracious and gives. For those blessed by Him will inherit the land, But those cursed by Him will be cut off. The footsteps of a man are established by Yahweh, And He delights in his way." This passage is meant to educate about the sovereignty of God, but the author illustrates this in a microcosm of the five themes of literature, the most important of which is sanctions.

    Sanctions are important to the book of Psalms, but especially so in their own book. Two chapters in the books of sanctions, 104 and 105, open with the words "Bless the Lord oh my soul". This is because God has blessed man in the past and will continue to bless him, the rest of those psalms praise God for his great benediction. Many of the other psalms, such as the 94th, describe the curses placed upon the unrighteous. O Lord, God of vengeance; God of vengeance, shine forth! Rise up, O Judge of the earth; Render recompense to the proud. How long shall the wicked, O Lord, How long shall the wicked exult? They pour forth words, they speak arrogantly; All who do wickedness vaunt themselves. They crush Thy people, O Lord, and afflict Thy heritage. They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the orphans. And they have said, “The Lord does not see, nor does the God of Jacob pay heed” (Ps. 94:1-7).

The book ends with the 106th psalm which is a complete history of Israel in terms of sanctions, concluding with exile as a punishment for disobedience. 

    The true importance of the sanctions in the Psalms is found by searching for meaning in its implications. When we look closely at sanctions it is clear they are tied to all of the other themes and act as the efficient cause of three. The sanctions imposed by the sovereign are the enforcer of ethical law, they impose a hierarchy between men and God and determine the ethical inheritance of our future. The theme of sanctions is found at all levels of resolution in the psalms and in each book. An entire book of the psalms is dedicated to the idea of sanctions and explores their implications of sanctions according to our ethical status. The idea of sanctions is not only central to the psalms but causal to many of the other core ideas and themes.

https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1156-do-the-imprecatory-psalms-and-christian-ethics-clash

https://www.reconstructionistradio.com/audiobook/that-you-may-prosper/appendix-2-psalms/

https://www.blueletterbible.org/lsb/psa/41/1/s_519001Five fundamental themes in the psalms